THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2022
Our blue tribe's Pizzagate crowd: Recent years have supplied a punishing anthropology lesson.
The red tribe has painfully taught us this:
At times of tribal dislocation, there's no claim that makes so little sense that millions won't believe it. You can start with the Pizzagate lunacy, move on to the stolen election.
Our own blue tribe is starting to teach a painful related lesson. Consider the headline which sat atop the featured report at Slate this very morning:
What Everyday White Americans and the Buffalo Shooter Have in Common
That's what the headline on the featured essay said.
Question! Just how much do "everyday people" have in common with an 18-year-old mass killer? We'd be inclined to start with this question:
How many "everyday white Americans" have shot and killed ten people in recent days?
The answer, of course, would be just one—but then again, so what? Letting his love and his wisdom show, Professor Matthew W. Hughey arranges to come up with this right in his second paragraph:
HUGHEY (5/18/22): Over the past several years, a half-dozen white supremacists committed acts of violence under the belief that their country belongs to white people and they must suppress any risk of replacement by force. This delusion led Anders Breivik to kill 77 people in Norway in 2011 and inspired Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. to kill three people outside of a Jewish community center in Kansas in 2014. Elliot Rodger espoused the same notion in 2014 when he killed six people in Santa Barbara, California. So did Dylann Roof before he killed nine parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people in a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, also composed and shared lengthy white supremacist screeds.
As he starts, Professor Hughey says that he's talking about the past "several" years. By the time he's done, he's talking about the past twelve years—and, in order to pad his numbers, he has to include an everyday white person from Norway and another everyday white person from New Zealand.
Breaking! If you're from Norway or New Zealand, then you actually aren't an "everyday white American." This means that Professor Hughey has identified four (4) everyday white Americans who behaved in much the same way the Buffalo shooter did, over the course of the past dozen (or more) years.
Needless to say, that's four people too many. But in his screeching, unintelligent rhetoric, Professor Hughey—and whoever decided to publish his essay at Slate—becomes our own tribe's equivalent of the lost souls who believed that Hillary Clinton had a bunch of children locked up in the basement of that pizza restaurant.
The crazy rhetoric emerges from Slate and serves to make everything worse. The crazies in the other tribe see their worst suspicions confirmed. Tucker takes over from there.
Meanwhile, let's take a look at the record:
Setting infants and children aside, there are well over 100 million "everyday white Americans" crawling about on the land. Very few such people ever have, or ever will, engage in conduct anything like the conduct the Buffalo shooter authored.
Don't tell that to Professor Hughey, who is one of Ours. Professor Hughey is one of the people who are increasingly making it clear that, at times of societal breakdown, there's nothing so dumb that it won't be loudly and dumbly screeched, by our tribe if not by theirs.
Who the Harold Hill is Professor Hughey? We began to suspect, some years ago, that our nation might not be able to survive biographies like this from our own tribe's exalted "thought leaders:"
Matthew Windust Hughey is an American sociologist known for his work on race and racism. He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where he is also an adjunct faculty member in the Africana Studies Institute; American Studies Program; Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, & Policy; Sustainable Global Cities Initiative, and; graduate certificate program in Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, & Politics. His work has included studying whiteness, race and media, race and politics, racism and racial assumptions within genetic and genomic science, and racism and racial identity in white and black American fraternities and sororities.
He first came to national attention for his book White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race, originally published in 2012.
Within Professor Hughey's work, everything looks like a nail.
The other tribe has lost its mind. Increasingly, our tribe is catching up.
These bands of defectives need each other, and they need publications like Slate.
"The other tribe has lost its mind.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder they embrace the ignorance of bigotry
Everyone that isn't a bigots left the Republican party in 1854.
Delete"Our blue tribe's Pizzagate crowd"
ReplyDeleteMeh. Pizzagate enthusiasts (who can all fit in a phone booth) may have a wrong address: pizzeria instead of the Lolita Express.
Your BlueAnons, on the other hand, are a whole bunch of bots inciting (often successfully) a race war.
Not even close, dear Bob.
How many babies did you kill beating off to Trump's HUGE tax break for the Establishment?
DeleteMao's sweat socks are the final burying place for all the babies he killed.
DeleteDearest Mao,
DeleteIn a February 2022 poll, 16% of Americans “completely” or “mostly” agreed that “the government media and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.”
So that would have to be a pretty big phone booth.
https://www.prri.org/research/the-persistence-of-qanon-in-the-post-trump-era-an-analysis-of-who-believes-the-conspiracies/
We completely agree as well. Doncha? Moreover, they are also shape-shifting alien Reptilians.
DeleteWhat's your point, by the way?
The idea that Democrats are shape-shifting aliens is, by far, the smartest, most well-thought-out economic idea the Right has ever had
DeleteBreaking! If you're from Norway or New Zealand, then you actually aren't an "everyday white American." This means that Professor Hughey has identified four (4) everyday white Americans who behaved in much the same way the Buffalo shooter did, over the course of the past dozen (or more) years.
ReplyDelete3 actually. Elliot Rodger was neither white, nor did he kill people because he "under the belief that their country belongs to white people."
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteElliott Rodger targeted women because he was a misogynist but he held white supremacist views, despite being biracial (Asian & white):
Delete"For weeks following the Isla Vista shooting, killer Elliot Rodger was described in mainstream media as a young White man. This was a convenient narrative: Rodger was seen as yet another example of the maligned young vengeance-seeking White male outcast (like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza): so twisted by violent first-person shooters and sexual-social frustration that he resorted to unthinkable violence.
Yet, for Elliot Rodger, this narrative is complicated by Rodger’s own tangled and confusing relationship with his racial identity: one that defies simple categorization as Rodger being straightforwardly White, or otherwise.
Biologically speaking, Elliot Rodger was biracially White and Asian American. Rodger’s biological mother was Asian American, and in his lengthy manifesto, Rodger self-identified as a “beautiful Eurasian”. Upon his death, Rodger was initially identified by law enforcement as an unknown “Asian male”.
Elliot Rodger also viewed his mixed race heritage as elevating him above those he termed as “lowly” “full-blooded Asian” men. In a lengthy 68-page report released last month by the Santa Barbara sheriff’s department, it is revealed that Elliot Rodger frequently conducted Google searches on Adolf Hitler and Naziism. These search terms are consistent with Rodger’s frequent racist web postings that espouse a clear belief in a racial hierarchy which positioned men of colour as sexually and socially inferior to Whites, and which further positioned White women as the most-coveted."
Saying that Elliott Rodger was not a white supremacist because he was not white is like saying that Hitler was not an anti-semite because he was part Jewish.
http://reappropriate.co/2015/03/was-elliot-rodger-asian-american/
Delete"By the time he's done, he's talking about the past twelve years—and, in order to pad his numbers, he has to include an everyday white person from Norway and another everyday white person from New Zealand."
ReplyDeleteThose white people from Norway and New Zealand were white supremacists and role models for the recent shooting. It doesn't matter if the shootings were 12 years ago or last year. They were current in THIS shooter's mind and they were shocking atrocities. Their dates don't mitigate the harm done in each crime, done in the name of white supremacy.
Very few everyday white Americans may every engaged in mass violence, but way too many are engaging in white supremacist acts every day.
ReplyDeleteHow many domestic terrorists should America tolerate? Is one too many are 12 too few? This kind of math on Somerby's part is sickening. There should be 0 white supremacist shooters and more than that, our nation should not be tolerating white supremacist ideologies. Yes there is freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that good decent people should be tolerant of the trash that is encompassed by the white supremacist worldview.
Somerby is so complacent about such killings that he thinks it is more important to use his blog to excoriate a sociology professor who is merely pointing out how mainstream white supremacism is getting, now that Tucker Carlson is its poster boy.
No one has lost his mind over here on the blue side, as long as we think that no number of shootings are OK in our country. Somerby's main objection seems to be to the definition of the word "recent."
Somerby is comparing a completely made-up conspiracy theory about Comet Pizza with something that is actually happening. He wants his readers to think both ideas are equally loony.
ReplyDeleteSomerby used to talk a lot about “gatekeepers” in the media and lament the fact that they (purportedly) no longer exist.
So why would he object to Hughey’s article, where a connection is made between the historical fact of white supremacy and its present-day use by unscrupulous actors like Tucker Carlson? It is clearly happening, and is leading to many undesirable results, not just the extreme cases of mass murder. This is to point out the unscrupulousness of right wing media in inflaming white grievance, particularly in a country filled with low-information people with unlimited access to guns. It is to ask that Murdoch do his own form of gatekeeping.
(Of course, Somerby doesn’t actually critique Hughey’s essay…he wants you to misunderstand its premise).
And thus to equate Hughey’s ideas with Pizzagate isn’t just wrong-it is pernicious in the way Somerby tries to blame liberals for being the ultimate cause or at least enablers of the reactions of Carlson’s audience. Carlson does not need essays like Hughey’s to make baseless claims about Democrats “replacing” white Americans. And asking the Hughey’s of the world to shut up is what’s known as “cancel culture.”
The Slate article does not mention Carlson at all and explicitly rejects the notion that it is a right-wing, political issue.
DeleteIs this your 4,080th misreading? Seems about right. You're so unbelievably stupid. It's incredible.
Somerby is just trying to point out how stupid you are. And he's 100% right. You are.
DeleteYou don’t have to think too hard to understand the connection Hughey makes between a more generalized white supremacy and the acts of murder he quotes in his essay. He has made numerous critiques of the right and the GOP that are easy enough to locate:
Delete“Watch Professor Hughey on Indus News discuss how far right and white nationalist groups evade Facebook rules in 2020 and continue to organize online.”
A book he wrote:
“The Wrongs of the Right: Language, Race, and the Republican Party in the Age of Obama”
And his appearance on Carlson’s show:
“A sociology professor at the University of Connecticut who believes white supremacy helped give Donald Trump the presidency clashed with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night.”
He clearly faults the right wing demagoguery to a significant degree on this issue, and it would serve the country well if right wing elites would stop it, stupid.
You're so, so stupid. It's wild. You don't even know how to read or reason.
DeleteSomerby s complaint is completely legitimate. The idiot writing for slate stupidly tried to draw a connection between the murders themselves and all everyday White Americans. Which is completely idiotic. And of course you probably can't see that being an idiot yourself. But that is what Somerby is saying as is dumb as Pizzagate and he's right. You're just as big an idiot sucker as the people who believe in pizzagate. That's all. That's all it's about. It's not that big a deal. It's not hard to understand. Well, for most people.
DeleteCalling someone stupid isn’ actually a criticism. It is juvenile name-calling.
DeletePizzagate is not equivalent to a badly written headline.
DeleteCall it whatever you want. You didn't even read the Slate article and you vomited out some complete misrepresentation of it based on the very knee jerk beliefs that were criticized in this original post by Somerby and misrepresented what he wrote in doing so. In a way, it's more sad than stupid. It's stupid sad but maybe the best word is pathetic. But it is true as a sad, pathetic idiot you do have the right to say anything you want. And you're probably a genius at some things. Political thought, basic reasoning are not among them though.
Delete“there are well over 100 million "everyday white Americans" crawling about on the land. Very few such people ever have, or ever will, engage in conduct anything like the conduct the Buffalo shooter authored.
DeleteDon't tell that to Professor Hughey”
Hughey did not say that most or many white people would engage in mass murder, but that didn’t stop Somerby from making that ridiculous insinuation.
You're really, really, really dumb. Are you high right now?.
DeleteMH, you continue to have your head in the sand. Hughey is an example of how a segment of the opposition to the GOP/Maga has gone off the rails. Just read his column. He's over the top. He's a professor who studies "whiteness." It's nuts. Being crazy isn't going to help solve problems.
DeleteIt's not about the headline - it's a claim that the murders themselves are a reflection of ordinary, everyday white American culture.
DeleteWith the current exodus rates, whites are going to be the only race left in the Democratic party.
ReplyDeleteMeh. They welcome dead voters of all races.
Delete3:59,
DeleteYou’ll know it’s happened when Republicans suppress the white vote.
Mao, please provide a list of dead voters who voted for dems; also ones who voted for GOP. Also, proof that any such list is valid. Also, explain how you know more dead voters voted for dems than GOP candidates.
DeleteWhoa, hit a nerve, eh?
DeleteThanks, this is one way to confirm that it's true.
Had we suggested that alien Reptilians vote en masse for your tribe, you wouldn't be triggered, n'est-ce pas?
I asked you to back up your claim about 'welcoming dead voters" and that means I'm "triggered?" Are you anything other than disingenuous? You have no answer, so that's how you go. You're ridiculous. Also, when it happens you suggest that alien Reptilians vote en masse for my "tribe", I'll see then whether I get "triggered" though I generally don't get :"triggered" over anything, just try to be rational and objective and let the chips fall where they may. You should try it.
DeleteOh dear. Are you on drugs? Cocaine, it sounds like?
DeleteCalm down, dear dembot.
The posters here note that Bob's comparison to Pizzagate
ReplyDeleteis bullshit, and they are obviously correct. It's interesting Mao even distances himself from Pizzagate, we would have thought he signed on to this like everything else.
The old Bob might have looked at the wobbly at best
ties between Bill Clinton and the "Lolita" express" now
championed by Bill Maher, who people of sober judgement
have finally come round to admitting, is a pretty sleazy
loser, a both sides hustler who plays the audience
as badly as Fox or MSNBC on a bad day.
Yes, this kind of crap shows up in Slate and Salon
all the time. It's why we could use an even handed, sober,
hard working critic of our political job. It's the job Bob once signed up for, but long ago abandoned.
Greg, I get your point. TDH should fire Bob and get someone sharper, who knows the difference between Pizzagate and this professor who studies "whiteness", maybe Matt Taibi, to take over, or we all cancel our subscriptions and demand our money back.
DeleteI have to confess.... you get what you pay for.
DeleteTDH is the best deal in town.
DeleteWhere else can you consistently read the Right-wing grievance of the day?
It's a stupid headline, agreed.
ReplyDeleteOf course, blacks commit murders at a much higher rate than Asians or whites. And, blacks kill whites a lot more than vice versa. Liberals seem to think it helps blacks to ignore this disparity.
ReplyDeleteHey David, any update on the Dinesh D'Souza propaganda video you rushed here to link to a few days ago?
DeleteLord, that’s low even for David.
DeleteSomerby's attempt yesterday was easily debunked so he searched hard for an article...er, opinion piece that could bolster his ridiculous stance. He didn't really find it, phoning it in is how he likes to roll of late.
ReplyDeleteSomerby's overarching stance is that Dems using identity, gender, and woke politics is converting Dem voters to Republican voters. This is utter nonsense, and Somerby does not even bother to offer bad evidence for this. In reality, evidence points to the opposite happening, recently a slew of woke progressives won electoral races, following a several year trend of progressives winning and centrist Dems losing.
There have been a slew of pseudo Dems grifting for the last few years but more recently starting to reveal themselves as the right wingers they always were, it is not just Somerby. There's Glen Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Joe Rogan, Tim Pool, Matt Tiabbi, Bill Maher, etc. They get mad when this has been pointed out, there is a lot of money at risk in their grift!
It's just weird how stupid the commenters here are.
DeleteI don’t know all the names you mentioned but Greenwald and Tabbi were never Dems, they were “progressives” who wanted to damage Democrats and didn’t care if it helped the right. Maher is just a sharper than average “both sides” guy. They all take a lot of money from the system to confuse people.
Delete"were never Dems"
DeleteWait, don't tell us: they kept their fingers crossed behind their backs while drawing blood for the loyalty oath?
Lowlife, are you mad cause you got caught not signing off on Pizzagate?
DeleteDamn that definitely is a list of people who don't make you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside by sticking to criticism of only conservatives. Very astute reasoning.
DeleteThere is a much longer trail going back to abortion clinic bombings. Very long. And I don't think Bob is going to find a lot of them done by Sikhs.
ReplyDeleteIn defense of these Republicans, there was nothing in the bill preventing black babies from getting the formula.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newsweek.com/nine-republicans-vote-baby-formula-1708062